Whale challenges Bomber
July 25th, 2011 at 12:54 pm by David FarrarYesterday Bomber Bradbury blogged at Tumeke:
Take Auckland as an example, 35% of households in Mangere and other south Auckland electorate’s have landlines, 50% in Mt Albert and other isthmus electorates have landlines, close to 80% in most North Shore electorates have landlines. A decade ago those differences were less than 10% and all electorates had the majority of people on listed landlines, now they don’t and you can easily see by that breakdown in Auckland alone how biased these cheap brainfart telephone polls can be.
There is no reference for these figures. Whale Oil responded quoting the latest census statistics:
But if you look at some real facts, not just the one pulled out of his rectum you find:
Mangere: 76% of households have landlines
Mt Albert: 89% of households have landlines
North Shore: 94% of households have landlines
If you go through all of the Auckland seats, you can’t find a single one that even remotely matches Bombers figures. So Bomber is saying (I suspect he invented the figures from his rather large and expanding arse) than since the 2006 census, 40% of Households in Mangere have given up their landline and 39% of those in Mt Albert have also given up their phone lines.
Bomber doesn’t do his tenuous grip on reality any good by spouting totally made up figures. He should retract his lies and apologise.
Bomber then posted again, just repeating his numbers, without any reference on which they are based.
So Whale has responded with this challenge:
I issue a challenge to Bomber then, that if he can prove his numbers, categorically, then I will donate the equivalent of a 5 year membership to the NRA to the Mana Party. But if he can’t produce any proof of his assertions then he has to join the NRA for 5 years.
I bet he isn’t man enough to accept this challenge.
Sounds fair to me.
Tags: Bomber Bradbury, Whale Oil
July 25th, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Hmmm, all rings true given some other (completely unrelated) loose claims Tumeke was making on a stuff forum a while ago…
This ‘Whale Oil’ chap might go far, if he ever learns how to behave like a grown-up
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
The battle of these two intellectual giants aside, an 18% differential in landline ownership between demographically different suburbs is not insignificant. Although I note that voter turnout in Mangere was about 30% lower than turnout in North Shore during the 2008 election.
[DPF: Well done. The comparison should be to the voting population, not the adult population]
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Bomber now insists that his figures are more up to date, but still pointedly fails to provide a reference.
He then insists that he won’t be lectured on “lying” by a “convicted criminal” (Slater). Except of course, Slater’s conviction is for telling the truth.
In other words, Bomber can’t even dis someone without making a fool of himself.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Just imagine a $125 donation to Hone.
Vote:Guessing he will take the family to the Waipapakauri Tavern for a bit of a knees up.
July 25th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
this is what happens when Bradbury forgets to take his pills .. I would suggest he doesn’t get challenged too often, possibly because few bother to read his rubbish
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Bomber also talks about his figures being “sited by Iprent” when it should be “cited” and I presume he means lprent (as in L for Lynn Prentice), not Iprent (as in I for eg Ian Prentice). Unless of course Iprent is someone else who has something to do with building sites. Or other sites that don’t come to mind right now.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Bomber is talking about listed phone numbers – ie ones that are in the white pages.
The reason for this being important is because even in Auckland 09 area there are only hundreds of thousands of households, 10 million possible phone numbers, and millions of numbers that are possible from the exchanges. Consequently random dialling is ineffective. Polling companies get listed phone numbers from white pages, or some other source of phone numbers. This is why having a unlisted landline number means I have no calls from either telemarketers or polling companies – except those that come from companies I have given my number to.
Cameron is being an idiot (as usual) because he is obviously cannot read. His numbers refer to a question in the census. It does not look at listed land-lines in a household, or even land-lines in a household. The question is if they have access to a landline. This can be a landline next door or a phonebox on a street corner.
The reason why bomber cannot provide a reference is because the data he is referring to is not published. It is the result of me writing electioneering software on a voluntary basis for the Labour party where I see the electoral roll matched to the white pages. When the question came up in discussions, I pulled some figures off a report I made prior to the last election about the issues with phone canvassing.
It is from a combination of the electoral rolls and the white pages which is unique to political parties. There is no published information. However anyone who does have access to this kind of data for electorates for phone canvassing knows about this issue of diminishing numbers of households with listed phone lines.
I’m sure that polling companies like Curia do as well. So I guess DPF is just making mischief
[DPF: You really are speaking shit. Many polling companies use random dialing. With CATI software and multiple lines, it doesn't matter how many numbers are not active. Also you can get ranges per exchange so one doesn't have to try ten million households.
You are also speaking shit if you think less than half the phone lines are listed.
And finally your suggestion that the census question is invalid becausse people may tick they have access to a landline if there is a phone box around the corner is the most laughable rationale I have ever seen to explain the difference between your claim of 35% and the census of 75%.
And even worse, you are lying. The census question is "Mark as many spaces as you need to show which of these are available here in this dwelling".
You are basically wrong on every single issue. Just because you personally can't data match more than a certain percentage of phone numbers in an area is not the same as what numbers are available to be called, and do get called]
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
So DPF did you know this information already and are just making mischief as Lprent is suggesting?
What is your experience of landline usage and how does Curia handle this?
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Complete FAIL by both Bomber and the guy with the girls name.
His excuse is pure eeasel words. He now claims is that he didn’t make up the numbers but Lynn Prentice did.
Bomber like to claim that he is “media” and the role of media is to hol the powerful to account, yet he can’t even hold himself to account.
He should join the NRA immediately.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
I have an unlisted phone number, but I still get calls from telemarketers and polling companies. (The most annoying is the recorded message that tell you about a product or service and invite you to call them. Do they seriously think anybody bothers listening to those messages, let alone calling them back?)
Vote:I had a call from NZ First before the last election. No idea how they got my phone number, there is no possible way I would have given them my details.
July 25th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Re listed phone numbers
It’s even more complex than Lynne says. The online white pages and paper white pages can differ – numbers will appear in one but not the other. Someone told me subscribers can opt to be in none, one or both – not sure if that is true but it seems to fit the pattern. So maybe everyone is right and we should all just get along.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
Bradbury is a noisey annoying git.
Vote:Best ignored.
He gets far too much attention in certain spheres like RNZ on Moras’ programme.Whenever he’s on I simply turn it off.
Marxist prat.
July 25th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Seems a simple explanation of where the numbers came from at the first opportunity would have avoided any more discussion.
30% population size is still not bad. BB would have to show that the lack of lines introduced bias into the survey. I can think of a way that would occur, so he should too.
Huh? He can provide a reference. Just like you did.
Maybe he just didnt think his source would do much to help his cause?
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
The reason why bomber cannot provide a reference is because the data he is referring to is not published.
Then he should say it’s not published and people can judge for themselves whether it’s credible or not. By just blandly quoting stats, he’s giving the impression that they are from a published source – no doubt his intention.
I’m sure you will appreciate that “Oh, I wrote a program which gave me those numbers” isn’t all that credible, especially when the figures appear to be so different from the official ones.
Given that he quotes a difference over 10 years, may I ask where the data from 10 years ago comes from?
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Can someone with an Auckland phone book do some very rough estimating? Count the number of phone numbers in an average column, multiply by the number of columns, and the number of pages. I would assume the number of households will be pretty easy to find.
Obviously this will be a really rough measure, but given the numbers we’re comparing are 35% and 75% it should give some vague indication of which is more likely to be accurate.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
That’s a good point. Did lprent notice the difference or is Mr Bradbury comparing Apples and Oranges?
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
The guy with the girls name is also lying.
Telecom hasn’t provided phone number data to political parties since 2008 as well he knows. Telecom ceased providing the data to political parties after yellow was sold.
So the diminishing numbers of phone lines don’t correspond to fewer people having landlines. They are because there haven’t been electoral roll updates for landlines since Telecom ceased to provide updates to political parties.
Polling companies still use whitepages. Which has the same ratio of landlines to households as the 2006 census data.
Vote:Telecom ceased providing the data to political parties after yellow was sold.
July 25th, 2011 at 3:15 pm
lprent suggests:
Well when I was running internal polling, random number generation (within set parameters, so if we wanted the Hutt valley area we’d tell it to start each sequence with “5″ for instance) was exactly what we used. Sure it was a little time consuming to get disconnected tones for many, but we also got unlisted numbers. As a result we were usually within one percent of the actual election result.
Nowadays you’ve got the technology beloved of telemarketers, which will listen to the line dialled and connect an operator only if it’s picked up and answered, so you’d eliminate the time wastage factor entirely.
So I join Gosman in asking DPF what Curia does.
And just to complicate matters – what about the growing number of “cellphone only” households?…
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
David Farrar has given a lprent a good slap down on this. I do love it when this happens as he can be such a sanctimonious pri@k (lprent I mean not DPF).
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
What is the issue here? Before the last election Labour tried to explain away their bad polling by claiming that their supporters only owned cellphones. They lost anyway. So now, three years later, they’re trying to explain away their abysmal polling by claiming that their supporters only own cellphones. It’s tragic really. They’re a party of people who are incapable of learning from their mistakes.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Yep. The Electoral Finance Act came in. They realised it would have to be declared as a donation (which was possibly the case in previous years) and then they realised it would be an illegal donation as Telecom met the definition of overseas company…
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
davidp “They’re a party of people who are incapable of learning from their mistakes.” They can’t learn from their mistakes because they can’t admit their mistakes. It’s always someone else’s fault.
Vote:Whenever I want insight into the mindset of a Labour ideologue, I ask my 6 year old to help dry the dishes.
July 25th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
So what you are saying GE is that Labour are so inflexible that they can’t cope with changing technology requirements (as borne out by their frequent SMOGS) and yet are flexible enough to bite themselves in the arse (a la EFA). I suppose the two are not mutually exclusive.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Sorry, Bomber is quoting Lyn “you better believe that i know more than anyone about climate change because i have a (snigger) earth sciences degree (authors snigger), any one who disagrees with what i say is banned and a nut job, even if it is on a subject i don’t have a degree in and they do” prentice from the standard? jesus wept, doesn’t bomber pillory the main stream media for that kind of intellectual laziness?
and when did the left start believing their own hype so much that they reference each other as evidence of proof? is it the wikipedia argument, even if it is wrong, if we get enough consensus, it’s right?
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:46 pm
Mr Bradbury is against intellectual laziness so long as it is MSM intellectual laziness from a (perceived) right wing bias.
When it comes down to left wing intellectual laziness the vast majority of his posts on Tumeke are based on it. You just need to see his attempts to keep the Israeli passport ‘scandal’ going to see this in action.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Lynn is a loser too. He think he is so cool and laconic, but really, anyone who runs the standard “voluntarily” must be a miserable person, as would someone who writes code for the labour party voluntarily. Shit no wonder the left are so useless, they are getting the lame to help the crippled
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Bloody hell David, the language you used in response to LP’s comment would get you banned in other places, and you had the temerity to disagree with him which is another banning offence.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 4:16 pm
GMDI>Shit no wonder the left are so useless, they are getting the lame to help the crippled
There are only two types of people who support Labour:
1. People who like telling other people what to do.
2. People who like being told what to do.
There are some type 2 supporters who’d like to be type 1 supporters. They think that if they slave away like loyal minions then one day they might be rewarded with a position that allows them to lord it up over others. I suspect this applies to Bradbury and Prentice, who are currently lords of their own blogs. Banning people who disagree with them is practice for the day when they might be able to force us all to join their union or something.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
You know you’ve messed up when the Stranded has to come and bail you out, and then fails miserably.
Poor Bradbury.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
DPF handed Bombers arse to him, but is there a plate big enough?
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
Whale. The numbers I gave were from 2008 for that reason – it was the last year that complete data matching was done. I believe that bomber explicitly said that in his post. However the trend has been there in every electorate I have looked since 1996 when I first looked at canvassing in Mt Albert. Since 2003, I have seen the phone data for all electorates. Each time the data is updated the percentages in the electorates gets less and the rate of decline is significantly higher in some electorates.
DPF: Random dialing would help. It is certainly technically feasible provided you’re willing to take the costs per dial on toll calls (probably less than when I last programmed that type of hardware).
But I suspect that using listed numbers is probably prevalent simply because it is likely to be considerably cheaper. After all since the polling companies do not release methodologies they really need to justify their techniques. Perhaps they should?
You are also speaking shit if you think less than half the phone lines are listed.
You’re talking shit if you think that was what I said. What I said was that there was a big difference between the numbers of listed landlines in different electorates. In Auckland, if you were over on the North Shore it is still possible to find electorates with over 80% listed phone numbers. On the isthmus in Auckland heading out west most electorates were about 50%. In a number of electorates in South Auckland you can find electorates with more like 35-40% listed land lines.
The average country wide is going to be a lot higher than Auckland. But the same trend of diminishing numbers of listed land lines is happening everywhere. Just a lot faster in some electorates than in others.
And even worse, you are lying. The census question is “Mark as many spaces as you need to show which of these are available here in this dwelling”.
And it also specifically excludes disconnected or broken lines… However there appears to be a considerable variance between what was reported on the census and what the listed phone lines shows up in some electorates. Either most people in those electorates do not list their numbers but have a working landline, or telecom (despite their experience) cannot manage to match data in particular electorates, or people are just ticking the boxes for the census.
Personally I suspect that the census data is utter crap because it is a too consistent pattern across electorates. Anyone who actually door knocks or works in low socioeconomic areas will tell you that there are bugger all working landlines there. It is the first thing that gets turned off when there are billing problems and it is really hard to get turned back on because of the disconnection/reconnection charges on a small budget. They shift to prepays pretty fast these days because the price of a cheap phone + card is less than the cost of connection.
But I guess it has been a while since you’ve worked those areas?
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 6:52 pm
..are you still living at home with ya mama Iprent ? I understand you do.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 7:09 pm
That would mean Iprent’s mum likes him. Possibly not the case with some others…
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
It seems Bomber is keeping an eye on these comments. He’s corrected the spelling errors on his blog that I pointed out here a few hours ago. (Unless lprent read my comment and told Bomber to correct them.)
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 7:27 pm
provided you’re willing to take the costs per dial on toll calls
Are polling companies charged different to normal? You’re usually only charged if a number is answered aren’t you? So random dialing wouldn’t be any different to any other way of dialing.
Unless it takes more answered calls to get your required demographics with random dialing, but I can’t see that being the case unless you already knew the demographics of listed numbers you were calling.
Vote:July 25th, 2011 at 7:42 pm
And if you hit an answering machine or service of any kind. These days that appears to be most of them – unless you are very fast. Depending on what your contract is, that can mean up to a minute charge.
Vote:July 26th, 2011 at 8:39 am
I like it that the fulla with the girls name also tried very hard to emphasise that he is doing “VOLUNTARY” work for the Labour Party… this is still a running joke for anybody who reads the Standard, who all get very precious whenever anybody talks about where they get their money from.
Have to say I find this rather amusing. How can we take you serious Lynne? Defending Bomber has to be an all time low for you.
Vote:July 26th, 2011 at 9:07 am
And if you hit an answering machine or service of any kind.
This must be the same whether you dial randomly or have a list you dial randomly from.
Vote:July 26th, 2011 at 10:28 am
PG: It is. When we’re canvassing specific targets I had to put in 5 columns for repeated attempts over time.
With a automatic process, it can detect disconnected or missing numbers really easily. But it has no signal to say that it just hit a answer phone – so it will have to pass off to a human for judgement.
But my point about economics is that even with automatic dialing it all takes time to eliminate invalids. At the end of it you still have to pass off to a human with the extra ‘cost’ and delays of the pass off (which tend to annoy people on the end of the line). That is a classic OR queuing problem. If you do it off listed phone numbers rather than using random dialing then it all gets a lot simpler as a OR issue. With the exception of getting the numbers in the first place it will be significantly cheaper (white pages charges for those).
That is why I think that in reality the polling companies are unlikely to use random dialing. It seems to me to be one of those nice theories that people still use random dialing. In practice I don’t think it’d ever happen in real time.
Where random dialing would be useful is to simply track down valid phone numbers to build a database of them. But I still reckon that’d be a lot more expensive than just getting a copy of all of the phone books listed numbers and dialing a a few thousand of them to get a sample of 750-1000 respondents.
Vote:August 3rd, 2011 at 2:55 pm
above mentioned “centre for poltical research” has been mentioned on national radio by the way, along with the aggrieved squealings of mrs newman, as if they had any validity what so ever, given that act don’t even make the 5 % thresh hold… if there is anything thing that needs reforming its that small loop hole in mmp, and the amount of sound bites that her and other ridiculous right wing fascists get on air… over parties that do actually pole, such as the greens.
Vote: